ROAR!!! Welcome to the Bronx Zoo

On Saturday, we decided to head out to the biggest zoo in North America - the Bronx Zoo! How hard could it be to get there, you might ask? For two subway, savvy New Yorkers it should be a piece of cake - hop on the #2 subway from Times Square and you're there, right? Well, let's just say that locating the zoo on a map was easy. Finding it from the subway stop was a little tougher. We were finally able to find the zoo by walking along the Queensborough Parkway following freeway exit signs for zoo parking. Finally there is was - we made it, and the excitement didn't stop there.

At the entrance was a big list of all the corporate contributors that had donated to the park. Notice Morgan Stanley listed just to the right of the big flash. Well - at least one of our companies made the list...

So the Bronx Zoo is the biggest zoo in the States. It is 265 acres, has 4,000 animals. To offer a comparison, the Woodland Park Zoo is 65 acres. Hey, what's a mere 200 acres? Actually, the size difference was not that noticeable when you're in there walking around. They make the zoo really easy to navigate so it's not overwhelming. The Bronx Zoo is famous for being one of he first zoos to move animals from cages into more natural habitat exhibits. I hope none of them get out! Yikes!
When the zoo originally opened in 1899, it was designed around the sea lion habitat. Right now there are four sea lions that call Astor Court home. The weekend we went was dubbed start of "Homecoming Week". Basically, it is a celebration and educational series about the migration of sea lions. None of the resident sea lions seemed too interested in "migration" and they continued to swim in circles around the pool.

The next stop on the zoo tour was the bison exhibit, not to be confused with buffalo. The Bronx Zoo has been very active in increasing the numbers of bison in North America. Conservationists to the zoo have successfully breed bison at the Bronx Zoo and in 1907 the first "herd" of Bronx Bison were released into a reserve in Oklahoma. This group of bison opted to stay and take advantage of their private swimming pool.

Another amazing exhibit is the Congo Gorilla Forest. It is the largest man-made rain forest in the world and take up 6.5 acres inside the park. It was really amazing. There was lots of action to see at the LIVE gorilla exhibit; including sitting, laying, eating, and sleeping. One gorilla put on quite a show by "watering the flowers" himself. Even better then that...was the part where he actually tasted it!! Actually on the subway we've both seen worse.


Our favorite exhibit (or should we say, resident) was the brown bears. They were quite the performers. Two of the bears played in this big pool, splashing and blowing bubbles. It was pretty cool to watch them have so much fun. Unfortunately, we forgot to charge the camera battery so we couldn't get any pictures.


A few other things worth mentioning:
The Skyfari - gondola-like cars that take you over the zoo from one end to the other. The only downside with this is the long line to get in and the fact that you don't really get to see much of the exhibits because of all the trees. Still, definitely on of our favorite parts.

The Camel Rides - that's right, you can ride a live camel. They smell authentic and everything!

Wild Asia Monorail - Funny that this is where you can see the hippos. I always thought they were in Africa...maybe Brad can confirm.

The Dancing Crane Cafe - Ice Cream...need we say more?



So, two ice cream cones, six penguins, three bears, one peeing gorilla, and a 45 minute subway ride later we feel confident saying that we are now Bronx Zoo Wildlife Experts - not to mention the newest Bronx Zoo Members! That's right - we're members, and we're willing to give tours for a small fee.

Let the Fireworks Begin!

Well, thankfully we recovered from the Coney Island Hot Dog Contest in time to go out again. This time we went headed across town to the East River for the Macy's Fourth of July Festival. Per the Macy's website, there were eight barges armed with over 40,000 fireworks. That means over the 30 minute show, there would be 1,300 explosions every minute.

We left our place on 10th Ave around 8pm. It took 45 minutes to get across town, its about a 2 mile walk. The NYPD was out in full force and directed us up an on-ramp to FDR Drive. FDR Drive is a lot like the Alaska Way Viaduct in Seattle. It's an elevated road that runs along the river. We ended up walking down FDR till we were perpendicular with 34th St. Looking back towards midtown, we had a perfect view of the Empire State Building, which was light up in red, white, and blue.

In Philadelphia and Boston they read the Declaration of Independence each year, but in NYC we just want to have the biggest fireworks show. And it was big. There were three distinct spots in the sky that were the center of the show. Most of the time, the three spots would show the exact same firework at the exact same time. The wind was blowing from south to north, I think. I'm still not really sure about the directions here. Basically, it was blowing from the tip of Manhattan towards central park. This caused all the smoke from the first and second spots to blow towards the third spot. It wasn't long before the display of the fireworks in the third spot (nearest to the UN Building) were hidden behind a cloud of smoke. As the fireworks started to get higher and higher, many were above the lingering smoke cloud.

I've been to many shows in Seattle over Lake Union and Mason Lake. In all truth, I really didn't see a huge difference. Seattle has all of the star, smiley faces, and cube shapes. They also have the really huge explosions. The only difference was that there were three times as many in New York. New York definitely wins the "biggest display" prize. Not sure it was the best display, oh, and did I mention that it was raining?

Coney Island Hot Dog Contest - An American Tradition

It's hard to say if having the subject of your first blog being about a hot dog contest is amazingly unique or just crazy. But either way, that's what we did to start July 4th, 2007. We hopped on to the Q subway and headed out to Coney Island. Having been out there before, we used our superior navigational skills to get lost almost immediately upon arrival. Once we recovered, we quickly hiked down the main drag in the Brooklyn neighborhood to throw ourselves into the crowd that had already formed two hours prior to the start of the contest. After some pushing, shoving, and liberal use of elbows we were able to make our way towards a somewhat decent view of the stage. It turns out that all the tall people in NYC got there early and had formed a phalanx that was not to be penetrated by Shelton's very own Miss Congeniality 1997, Ellen Sims. We had to settle for pictures being taken by raising the camera over our heads and pointing in the general direction of the most noise. Some turned out, some were deleted.

After hours of anticipation, the contest finally started. Eric "the red" Denmark was our early favorite, since he was the lone Seattle representative. However, we quickly turned our attention from him to the only two real competitors, Joey Chesnut and Takeru Kobayashi. The record in the prior year was 53.5 HDBs (HDB means hot dog and buns.) That means the estimated pace should be something like 5 HDBs a minute.

The contestants dove in to the plates at a furious pace. After the first minute, Joey Chestnut had consumed 15 HDBs. The crowded wanted to cheer, but most people had looks of shock and horror! The 12 minute contest went by without much change until the last minute of the contest. The crowd started to come alive, mostly with chants of "Joey, Joey, Joey." The race was close. At the one minute mark, it was clear the world record was going to be broken. Joey Chesnut was at 59 and Kobayashi was at 59. Can you even write a movie script with that much drama? As the ten second count down began, there was a massive shoveling maneuver performed by all contestants to get as many HDB's as possible into their cheeks. Chipmunks around the world were jealous. When the bell/whistle rung/blew, the unofficial counts were 62 for both competitors. It was going to be a 12 minute race decided by a crumb! After the officials convened for what seemed like hours, Joey Chestnut was pronounced the victor with a final count of 66 HDBs, compared with Kobayashi's 63. Amazing. The mustard yellow belt was going to stay in America. The 6-time defending champ was finally beaten.

After that, we were hungry but had no real desire to eat, again, ever. We stayed for the award ceremony then headed home to watch the whole thing again on ESPN, thank you DVR. And with that, I end my first blog.

See pictures of the Coney Island Hot Dog Contest here:

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=159068756/a=12456302/t_=12456302